To: Samuel Gendler <sgendler@ideasculptor.com>
cc: Greg Smith <greg@2ndquadrant.com>, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>,
	Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@gmail.com>, pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Wrong docs on wal_buffers? 
In-reply-to: <AANLkTik52Agzi+3dUsdK5=UK6BeLLz2fU7FLF07hy+Yy@mail.gmail.com> 
References: <4D24D7DE.6020507@agliodbs.com>
	<AANLkTi=YLCEGcwa-9hFYykRgTfUVDhZrwNGo7qaJZnRC@mail.gmail.com>
	<4D2610F3.8070407@agliodbs.com> <4D269899.6040901@2ndquadrant.com>
	<AANLkTik52Agzi+3dUsdK5=UK6BeLLz2fU7FLF07hy+Yy@mail.gmail.com>
Comments: In-reply-to Samuel Gendler <sgendler@ideasculptor.com>
	message dated "Fri, 07 Jan 2011 06:09:38 -0800"
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:07:01 -0500
Message-ID: <18962.1294412821@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Samuel Gendler <sgendler@ideasculptor.com> writes:
> Does it not seem that this insistence on shipping a default config that
> works out of the box on every system incurs a dramatic penalty when it comes
> to getting a useful postgres config for a production system?

> I'm sure this argument has probably been done to death on this list (I'm a
> relatively recent subscriber),

No kidding.  Please review the archives.

The short answer is that even though modern machines tend to have plenty
of RAM, they don't tend to have correspondingly large default settings
of SHMMAX etc.  If we crank up the default shared-memory-usage settings
to the point where PG won't start in a couple of MB, we won't accomplish
a thing in terms of "making it work out of the box"; we'll just put
another roadblock in front of newbies getting to try it at all.

			regards, tom lane